


False Prophets

by King_of_Dreams



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Violence, Dark, Drama, Gen, Regret, Spoilers for Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), might be better or worse if you like cyril, takes place around point of timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 03:16:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20900765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/King_of_Dreams/pseuds/King_of_Dreams
Summary: Cyril wanted nothing but to see Rhea's smile. Then, he saw Edelgard's.





	False Prophets

The firelight made Cyril’s shadow shake as he swept dirt off the cobble path. He readjusted the torch strapped to his left hip and made his stance surer, eyes peeled for intruders. If any silhouette emerged over the horizon at the end of the pathway, he had an axe latched to his right side to take care of them immediately. He tightened its cord and gulped.

_S’quick work, Lady Rhea. Easy work._ He’d said those words cheerily earlier in the day, yet he hadn’t really felt them at all. Being out this late at night made him nervous as hell, but Lady Rhea had smiled so big and patted his arm gently and whispered, “Cyril, you’re the best groundskeeper we have.”

Just the memory of her smile was enough to make him sweep harder, move faster, and feel as if his axe had grown ten times sharper. Since he’d first come to Fòdlan, making Lady Rhea smile was his only goal.

“The best groundskeeper…” He repeated the words to himself, over and over under his breath. He wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t said it so certainly. Lady Rhea never lied; Lady Rhea never spared his feelings. If he were to do a bad job, she would say it, he imagined, but he had never done a bad job for her so he had no evidence to prove that idea. If he _had_ ever done a bad job for her he would have hanged himself for his incompetence. She deserved only the best, only the best, only the best groundskeeper, the best groundskeeper, the best—

“Hello, Cyril.”

He shrieked and struck out to the right with his broom. Edelgard jumped backward just in time, clutching her vest.

“Are you quite well?!” Her tone of voice remained even, but her eyes crackled with anger. Cyril stood stock-still for a moment, holding the broom up above his head, before he finally processed the situation and lowered it.

“Uh… yeah. Sorry ‘bout that, Ms. Edlegard. You scared me a little is all.”

She let her arms rest and her eyes softened. “I see. I’m sorry I scared you, I’m just out on a midnight stroll.” She raised a hand in parting. “Take care!”

He nodded, glad to be rid of her. He turned back to his work but couldn’t bring his broom down before she called out again.

“Your torch.” He glanced back at her.

“What about it?”

“Isn’t that a little unsafe?” She pointed at it with a frown. He looked down and saw that its blaze was only a scrape away from his forearm.

He shrugged. “It’s the easiest way when I’m working by myself. I don’t mind if I get burnt a little. I’d just go to Professor Manuela in the morning.”

She didn’t seem to like that answer, and he wished he had said something she would have liked because she didn’t turn to leave like he’d hoped. Instead, she crossed her arms and cocked her head curiously.

“Why are you working this late? Isn’t it dangerous to be out this far on your own?”

“Isn’t it dangerous for _you_ to be out this far on your own?”

She smiled and shook her head. “This isn’t dangerous to me.”

“Well, it’s not dangerous to me either. Hardly anything’s dangerous to me.”

“Oh.”

“Got it?”

“Well—”

“Got it?”

“Yes.” She frowned, but her eyes were downcast rather than sharp. “Do you… have a problem with me, Cyril?”

His hands tightened around the broom. “No.”

“Well, it certainly sounds that way.”

“Well, it’s not that way. Got it?”

She sighed and uncrossed her arms. “Yes, I understand. Sorry to bother you while you’re working. I’ll be going now.”

With the tiniest curtsy, she turned to leave. But Cyril did not turn back to sweeping, and instead he watched her back as she left. She moved regally, with her head poised straight forward and her shoulders held up so firmly he wondered if they could bend at all.

_I guess this is the caliber of the next emperor…_

“Hey! Ms. Edelgard!”

She turned around, surprised, and trotted back a few steps. “Yes, Cyril?”

“Why don’t you ever go to church?”

He had expected some sort of reaction, but instead she just froze in mid-motion like a broken machine. It was ten seconds before she finally cranked back to life, blinking and looking mildly to the side.

“Hm... well, I _do_ go to church, so I’m afraid I don’t understand the question.” She looked back at him with blank, steady eyes.

“You might go. But you don’t… go,” he said. She stared at him as if waiting for an explanation, but he just met her with an equally resolute stare. She broke the contest first with a shake of the head.

“Excuse me. What?”

“You never pray. You never give offering. You never speak to Lady Rhea unless it’s some kinda class business.” His frown deepened. “You just… show up when you’re supposed to.”

Emotion seeped into her eyes, something like anger, but Cyril couldn’t really identify it. Either way, her face tightened and her mouth became a thin line.

“Cyril, I don’t think it’s really your place to question people about their religion. In fact, I think it’s very rude.”

“It’s rude to be at the Officers’ Academy and not honor Lady Rhea.”

“Who are you to say I’m not honoring her?”

Her face steeled itself, and Cyril suddenly lost his will to argue. He scowled, but shrank back and clutched his broom even tighter.

“…Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, I guess.”

Her face lost its harsh edge, but she kept her gaze on him firmly. “You’re forgiven. But please, in the future, don’t speak so out of turn.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes on the ground and burning with shame.

“Well then. I’ll take my leave. See you in the morning.”

He did not watch her leave this time, turning around and hurrying to get his work done before the midnight bell. He tried to return to his ritual from before and repeat whatever had been on his lips, but three different words found him: “I hate her.”

* * *

Cyril walked out of the second-floor conference hall with light feet, pumping his arms and smiling. Edelgard noticed it out of the corner of her eye and laughed at the sight.

“Cyril! What’s got you so happy?”

As soon as she spoke, his body went rigid and he looked at her with flat, tired eyes. “Nothing.”

She rose an eyebrow. “Well… that just can’t be right. I know you’re happy about something!”

He looked down and kicked his feet against each other. “No, it’s nothing. Really.”

“Are you a fool or a liar?” Hubert said from her side.

Edelgard turned to him with a frown, ready to rebuke him, when Cyril answered, “Neither. Am I being interrogated or something? What’s your problem, hawk-eyes?”

Edelgard’s mouth opened in shock. He had said it to Hubert, but his glare made it clear that his remark went two ways. She felt Hubert shake.

“You _insolent_ little…”

“Hubert, it’s OK.” He stopped instantly, but she could sense that he was still prepared to turn Cyril into a stain on the floor at her command. “Cyril, didn’t we just talk a few days ago about speaking out of turn? I know Hubert was a bit rude, but that was uncalled for, too.”

He stared at the wall and scowled for a brief flash of time. She was worried he was about to explode, but then he muttered, “Sorry.”

She smiled triumphantly and inclined her head. “Thank you. Sorry that we bothered you.”

He dashed off immediately. Hubert said, “That boy is an eyesore.”

“I don’t think that he likes me, but I’m not sure why,” Edelgard said.

“He spends all day licking the dust off Rhea’s boots. Seeing people that aren’t as slavish as him must trouble his feeble little mind.”

“Hubert…” She looked nervously to the conference room doors.

“I said nothing untoward.” He gestured his head at the doors. “Speak of the devil, we have a meeting with her.”

“Hubert!”

After a curt apology, he led the way to their meeting with Rhea and the professor. Edelgard looked over her shoulder and noticed a shock of wavy brown hair and a single eye peeking out from behind the stairwell’s doorway. It disappeared in an instant.

* * *

It was an abandoned prison on the outskirts of the monastery, and Cyril couldn’t give a good reason why he’d agreed to go. Maybe it was more to prove them wrong than anything. Rhea came into view through the slat in the wall he watched from, lit up by strips of moonlight and robed in her usual splendor. Cyril held his breath as she took a few pattering steps to the center of the room. She was radiant, regal.

A prisoner knelt before her, staring at the floor. Two iron-clad guards stood behind him with lances pointing up. Rhea tilted her chin up.

“Are you aware of the wrongs you’ve done?”

He said nothing.

“Answer me.”

“I was… trespassing in the Holy Tomb.” He glanced up. He was young, with a big nose and watery eyes. “Right?”

“So you are aware of your transgression.”

He looked back down, his handcuffs clanking with the movement. Rhea shot a searing glance at the guard to her left.

“I have passed judgment. Execution.”

The prisoner’s head shot up and he sputtered nonsensically. Rhea did not look at him, keeping her gaze fixed on the guard. He looked around the room as if waiting for someone to object. His companion was silent.

“Did you hear me?”

“Well, milady, I…”

“Did you _hear_ me?”

He gulped and gave a single nod, slow and heavy. “Milady.”

The tip of the spear slipped through the back of his neck with an ugly _squirt_. Rhea recoiled at the sight of the blood, cascading onto the plain concrete. She retreated into the darkness at the back of the room as the guards lifted the body. The neck kept spilling blood and dyed the dead man’s shirt a thick crimson.

Cyril had meant to stop watching, but he could not rip his eyes away. His teeth were dug into his bottom lip as he watched every drop, every stream of blood pool on the floor. The quiet pulse of it sounded like a waterfall to him.

Edelgard watched him steadily. “Do you see now?”

“Shut up.” His eyes stayed glued to the gushing wound until the body was dragged out of sight.

* * *

“Do you understand our plan?” Edelgard’s eyes darted to the faces of each class member. Everyone nodded, Caspar with enthusiasm, Bernadetta with unease, Petra with determination, and Cyril with a quiet calm. Her gaze settled on him.

“Cyril… I know this is all very new to you.” Everyone turned to him as she spoke. He bristled under the attention, shuffling his feet but keeping his head up.

“S’all right, Miss Edelgard.” He sniffled. “I know that I’m doing the right thing, so…”

She smiled, the most simple and beautiful smile Cyril had ever witnessed. It unfurled slowly, as if it was reluctant to show itself, and then it rounded her cheeks and glittered her eyes. Her silky white strands of hair framed her face and gave it the look of a masterwork painting. Cyril’s mouth opened a little.

“I knew you would say that. Just making sure.” She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, “The time is nigh! Everyone, will you follow me?!”

Cyril looked over his shoulder to see her points of address: the huge crowd of soldiers that filled the rest of the encampment. They raised their weapons above their heads and hollered discordantly in response.

“ALL HAIL EMPEROR HRESVELG!” A lanky swordsman dropped to one knee and bowed his head. The action spread like a tidal wave, and soon the entire crowd of soldiers had hit the ground, weapons planted up to the sky and heads bent to the earth.

Cyril knelt. He heard Linhardt mumble disapprovingly from above him, but it didn’t matter to him. Edelgard stepped forward and knighted him with the blunt end of her axe. He smiled peacefully.

* * *

Cyril scanned the entrance hall of Castle Hresvelg with tired eyes. It had a decadence far beyond that of Garreg Mach, with copper torches enwrapped by golden snakes lining the walls. Stained glass windows bearing eagle motifs and mythological scenes stared back at him from nearly every point he laid eyes on.

Hubert stood behind him with a broom in hand. “Lady Edelgard has said you will work with the sanitary servants.”

“Yeah. I asked to do that,” he replied. He heard the wood of the broom handle creak ever-so-slightly as Hubert tightened his grip.

“You are a _servant_. Do you understand what that means?”

“It means I serve Lady Edelgard. Not you,” he said coolly. Hubert walked around to face him and glowered over him.

“It means you take orders from your superiors, you meddlesome little _louse_.” Hubert shoved the broom into his hands and briskly stalked off. Cyril watched as he ascended the grand red-carpet stairs to the throne room.

“Screw you,” he muttered.

He gripped his broom and stared down at the floor. It was a complex mixture of plain cobble and marble like he’d never seen. Veins of twinkling marble caught the torchlight and flashed, making him blink excessively as he took it all in.

_I guess this is the palace of the emperor_, he thought. He glanced briefly up at the throne room doors, on the upper balcony at the far end of the hall. He went to sweeping, gritting his teeth.

“Lady Edelgard needs only the best… the best… the best groundskeeper… the best groundskeeper…”

* * *

“I don’t understand why you keep that lapdog around.” Cyril froze beside the door. He focused his ears on the conversation behind it with widened eyes.

“He’s very dedicated,” Edelgard said. “And he likes it here. It gives him purpose.”

“Even ants have purpose. That isn’t a good reason to keep someone close,” Hubert said.

“Hubert…” A thick pause. Cyril was prepared to hurry away in case one of them went to leave the room, but then he heard her sigh.

“I had to get him away from there.”

“Away from where?”

“The monastery, obviously!” Cyril flinched. He’d never heard Edelgard raise her voice like that. “And the Immaculate One! I thought I could make him see the light!”

Cyril tried to wet his lips, but they insisted on staying dry. There was another pause.

“He never will,” Hubert purred. Cyril strained to hear him. “He’s not like us. He has no brain. He has no spirit. He just does what you tell him to do.”

“Not everyone has the same intellect,” Edelgard said sharply. “The mark of a good leader is to make use of everyone.”

“So he’s useful to you?”

“If you’re dying to know, yes. That’s why he’s here.”

He heard Hubert snicker, but the sound seemed distant to him now. “Well then, you answered my question. That’s all I wanted. Honesty.”

“I’m always honest.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, Your Majesty…” Hubert’s voice came clearer into focus; now he was near the door. Cyril shifted away as quietly as he could manage.

“…keep away…” That was all he could hear of the last sentence. He was at the end of the hallway by the time Hubert exited the small conference room. He swallowed hard, feeling a pair of eyes searing into the back of his head as he rounded the corner.

He slipped into his bedroom a few minutes later, a small accommodation, tucked away in the west wing of the second floor. Edelgard had told him it was to separate him from the other servants who slept in the basement (he was a knight, he was special).

It was a square dusty room that held a cot, an old desk, and a small mirror with a fake silver border. He stopped in front of the mirror and searched his eyes for a brain, a spirit.

He took the mirror off the wall. He flung it at the door and screamed.

* * *

Edelgard leaned on the rail of the balcony and stared out at the courtyard. The moonlight blanketed it in a wispy grey, making the hedges mysterious and the night watchmen spectral. She wondered how her own hair made her look in the midnight glow. The ghost emperor, presiding over Hell, probably.

She stepped away, tightening her blood red robe. Insomnia was a plague on her, as always. _But it beats nightmares_, she thought.

She slid the glass door into her bedroom aside and jolted as she stepped inside. There was Cyril, standing near the bed, sweaty and panicked.

“…Cyril.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her face. “What in the world are you doing here?”

He swallowed. His miniscule Adam’s apple bobbed up and down violently. “Where’s Lady Rhea?”

Edelgard tensed up instantly. She tightened her robe further without thinking. “Rhea disappeared after the battle at Garreg Mach. You know that.”

“That’s not what Thoreau the line cook told me,” he babbled. “He said Lady Rhea’s being kept somewhere in the dungeon. That she’s gonna get publicly executed to make a statement against the church. That you chained her to a wall and you’re feeding her poisons.”

“Cyril.” Edelgard took a cautious step forward.

“He said she’s alive and she’s locked up here.” He swallowed again. “I have to see her. I gotta see her.”

“Cyril, I don’t know where she is.” Another step. “She disappeared. We have scouts looking for her right now. Nobody is keeping secrets. Please, calm down.”

“But she _can’t_ have disappeared.” His eyes flitted nervously between Edelgard and the glass door behind her. “It’s Lady Rhea. She would have told me. I would have known.”

“Cyril.”

“I was her favorite groundskeeper.” He gripped something in his right pants pocket. “And she liked me. She wanted me around.”

“Cyril—”

“You… you did something to her.”

“Cyril, listen to me!”

“You’ll _die for that! Die!!!_”

Cyril lunged with a knife. Edelgard jumped to the side to escape. He reared up and came dashing for her with it pointing straight at her and he STABBED into the ground. She wasn’t there.

Edelgard had bolted to her bedside and retrieved an iron axe. The door burst open and two knights hurled themselves into the room, lances forward. But they were too late, Edelgard readied the axe and Cyril was running at her again and the knife was FORWARD and then suddenly…

They stood there together, embracing. The knights had stopped mid-run and just watched, mouths agape. Edelgard held his left shoulder as blood dripped down between their feet. Cyril’s breath was haggard. Her axe was lodged in his gut, separating them.

His right hand opened and his knife clattered to the floor. He retched in an attempt to say something. Edelgard released him and he fell to the ground.

“Y… you…” he managed, before his speech was reduced to thin rattles.

The guards started to approach, but Edelgard held an arm out to stop them. She knelt next to Cyril’s head and frowned. Her eyes threatened to tear up; she suppressed them.

“…Why?”

He shuddered. “I… I just wanted… someone to smile at me…”

She took his hand in hers and stroked it. Her fingers were not delicate or loving, but hard, working to keep him awake and aware. Her lips would not budge from the shape of a concerned frown.

“You’ll be as good as new soon, Cyril. And we can forget about this.” She pressed his palm deeply and he winced. “Okay? My favorite groundskeeper?”

He said nothing. She motioned for the guards to go find a healer. She turned back to him, preparing more words of comfort, but stopped when she looked at him. In his eyes she saw an impassable abyss.

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure about the violence of the ending but I hope you enjoyed the story anyway. 3H is an amazing game with amazing characters so hope to write more about it


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